A new genealogy partnership means more online records for researchers with African-American roots.

Subscription website Footnote.com and free records site Lowcountry Africana are starting a new collection of estate inventories and bills of sale for Colonial and Charleston South Carolina from 1732 to 1872.

Estate inventories often name slaves that deceased owners left to heirs. Bills of sale document transactions involving slaves.

Lowcountry Africana has established an online volunteer program to create an index for this collection. To learn more about this volunteer program or to sign up to be a volunteer, visit the Lowcountry Africana site.

Charleston was a port of entry for the Atlantic slave trade, so thousands of African Americans may have ancestors who came from, or traveled through, South Carolina.